With Paramount releasing Terminator: Dark Fate this coming November, I decided to revisit James Cameron‘s two Terminator films, and found myself questioning two key sequences in the final moments of his Terminator 2 Judgment Day.
Outside of Robert Patrick‘s T-1000 not killing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) when she refuses to call for John (Edward Furlong), I was directed by a reader on Twitter to an earlier sequence in which the T-1000 beats the shit out of Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s T-800. The sequence ends with the T-800 having his entire arm crushed in a machine before having the T-1000 drive a spear through his main energy source. After the power is rerouted, the T-800 is rebooted and eventually saves the day, blasting the T-1000 so badly that it falls into a giant vat of molten metal.
This is a kismet moment as it also offers the trio an opportunity to destroy the arm and chip retrieved from Cyberdyne Systems. Only there’s one problem: they completely forget about the T-800 arm left behind in the gear following the battle with the T-1000.
While the novelization of Judgment Day corrects this logic error, and promotional materials for the retconned third film included a tease of the arm’s recovery, this massive fuck up has plagued the film for almost 30 years. Until now.
The same source that explained to me how Edward Furlong would be included in Dark Fate reveals that this Judgment Day moment will, in fact, be referenced in the new film, leading to some closure – and maybe even new mythology. While excited to learn this information, I refrained from digging deeper as I’d like there to be some surprises left by the time this hits theaters on November 1st.
Do you have any theories of your own?
